There are many misconceptions perpetrated by the cosmetic industry. The marketing folks will tell you that clogging your pores is bad for you, yet sell you a moisturizer that contains waxes and silicones. At ASK Cosmetics, we break from the traditional mold of marketing and tell you like it is. Using innovative new techniques, our products actually work and do not contain the cheaper ingredients that everyone else uses. The bottom line here is not cost, but rather, does the product work.

Skin Care

The skin, being the wonderful organ that it is, spends its life trying to maintain itself in its health natural balance in order to protect what is underneath. It maintains the body's total moisture content in order for us not to dry out completely and turn to dust in the wind. Keep in mind that our bodies are 98% water. So the skin is very important to our survival and we take its importance for granted almost exclusively. We worry about how it looks, we put substances on it to improve the look and external feel without thinking about how it functions and what we are really doing to it when we apply these substances. In most cases what we are doing to our skin to improve the "look" or "feel" of it creates a whole other set of issues and problems that we then put more substances on to correct the "look" and "feel" of. It is a never-ending cycle of abuse of one of our most important organs.

In order for the skin to perform its function of maintaining our body moisture content it has to maintain its moisture barrier, which is basically comprised of lipids. Lipids are different than the industry trendy word "Liposomes" Liposomes are like little balloons filled with various substances and these filled liposomes are used by the industry basically for the purpose of enabling them to put oil and water together in a mixture without it separating. The idea of Liposomes is that they are supposed to be small enough to carry a substance, like vitamin C for instance, into the skin because the liposome is small enough to pass through the initial layers of skin surface. The only problem with Liposomes is that they are VERY unstable. Within weeks of the mixing and bottling of the product, they are rarely intact, and therefore rarely useful for the purpose of transferring substances through the initial layers of skin. Very few products make it out of the manufacture's warehouse within this time, let alone get used up by a consumer within the time that the Liposomes would have remained stable enough to have any truly useful purpose.

The skin needs, and attempts to maintain, the lipid content, it’s natural moisture barrier, from within. It does so by using the fats, salts and sugars we digest from the foods we eat. In nature, this would be the body’s only way of providing lipids to the skin’s moisture barrier and maintaining the body’s moisture content. The skin perspires to moisturize itself and to cool the body down. The skin also respires or breathes in order to help it maintain it’s balance and for it’s metabolism to function correctly and efficiently.

Stearic Acid, Cetyl Alcohol, Steryl Alcohol, Glycol Distearate, Cyclomethicone, Dimethicone

We abuse our skin with well-marketed skin care products containing wax or silicone. Above is a sample of just a few most popular, and generally less expensive, chemical names for "Wax" and "Silicone" family ingredients used by the cosmetic industry. Be assured that there is NO chemical that has "cone" at the end of it that is NOT a Silicone, so ingredients ending with "cone" are silicones. Does it make sense to you to coat it with wax and silicone?? Your skin does not contain silicone or wax. Wax and the silicone do not absorb into your skin but they do sit on the surface coating your skin and your pores, inhibiting its ability to respire and moisturize itself naturally, effectively and efficiently.

So how does your skin respond to this insult? First off, the waxes are smothering, and seeing as they have now "glued" themselves firmly to the surface of your skin, they are irritating as well. Your skin responds by trying to return itself back to it’s normal balance. It works harder to produce oils (lipids) to replace the lipids stripped out of the skin by the wax, which is acting as a solvent. The wax thenw dissolves and removes the natural moisture barrier in your skin. This causes your skin to try to replace it, making it dry and scaly on the surface. The lipids have been stripped from the surface skin cells. These dried out skin, and now dead, cells contribute to the clogging of your pores, ESPECIALLY when "glued" there by the wax. Oily at the same time, your skin works overtime trying to constantly replace the lipids being stripped from your skin by the products you are using.

Acne Treatments

Even worse are the "acne" treatments that use extremely harsh drying agents, trying to "dry out" the pimples when they actually make the problem worse. You may get a short quick fix with such products, but over time, and it usually doesn’t take that long, your skin will fight back, trying desperately to maintain it’s balance. What makes acne worse is the infections at and around the eruption sites. Your skin’s ability to naturally fight off infection is inhibited when it is kept busy full-time metabolizing just trying to maintain it’s moisture barrier, which is it’s main function. So now you get the RED SORE "third eye" type blemishes. The more you dry out your skin, the worse it is going to get, and not just the breakouts! Now the damage to the under layers of skin from the irritation and abuse of the harsh drying agents in the acne products comes into play. These acne products REALLY dry the skin, causing even more clogging of the pores as the dead skin cells create yet another clogging layer underneath, held in place by the waxes. Even oil free products contain waxes. Don’t believe that water based or oil free means wax free or silicone free, or even that they are therefore better for your skin.

Healthy Skin is Happy Skin

Skin it needs to be clean. Clean does not mean that we need to strip it of lipids. Every cleanser on the market uses the same surfactants (cleaning chemicals). They are harsh and strip the lipids from the skin. Everyone raves about how wonderful baby’s skin is. When a human is born the lipid content in it’s skin is at the highest levels that it will ever be. Unfortunately for us, from then on the lipid content diminishes. It is the lipid content that makes a baby’s skin so soft and beautiful. Our Hand and Nail Cleanser is designed it not to strip the lipids out of your nails and cuticles, which would make your nails brittle by drying, them out. It is an excellent face wash too, leaving the skin feeling soft and moisturized.

Moisturizing cream cleansers are not any better. They contain wax and silicone. Facial toners that tighten your skin are damaging to the skin and all of the skin’s purposes. Toners and astringents are alcohol or alcohol type chemicals that are extremely harsh and really strip the lipids out of your skin. Do they need all of these chemicals to try to remove the layers of wax left on your skin by the cream cleansers?

The bottom line is that you need to clean the debris off your skin, built up from touching your face, make up, pollution, etc, in order for your skin to breath and be healthy. You do not need to strip the lipids from your skin to clean it nor do you want to "glue" wax on to the dead skin cells and remaining debris.

Moisturizing Your Skin

So, you want to replace LIPIDS in the skin to help the skin function at it’s best and to make it more like the baby’s skin we all love and want. You do not want to place a layer of wax on your skin that will smother it. Ever notice when you use moisturizers and then try to apply your makeup, that the makeup slides around on that layer of wax from the moisturizer? The makeup is not touching your skin. There is a layer and it is the waxes and silicones in the moisturizers. Even water based and oil free moisturizer use the waxes and silicones to stop them from separating and give you the artificial feel that they have done something to your skin. The waxes and silicones irritate, causing the skin to react to balance itself and that is where the blemish and breakout problem stems from.

The more you use stuff to correct one problem, the more problems your create for your poor skin to try to correct.

You Need to Add Lipids

The only way to treat and eliminte skin problems is to deal with the real cause and not cover it up. Our products do not have any waxes or silicones, but are rich in lipids that are absorbable into the skin. Many of our products contain a secret ingredient allows the penetration of lipids into the nail, hair and skin as proven in independent clinical studies performed on our products by The California Skin Research Institute. These products work in the way the skin is naturally intended to function.

We use ingredients that are naturally found in your skin. Even though they may sound like chemicals, they are lipids, salts, sugars, enzymes, etc, naturally found in your skin. So with our products, you are putting back into the skin what is normally found there. You are not irritating the skin and causing more problems, because our skin care products do not contain waxes and silicones to fool you into believing that they moisturized. They actually moisturize your skin with lipids and such that are naturally there. They do not smother your skin, so your skin can breath. They do not coat the skin, so your pores don’t become clogged, and they do not "glue" dead skin cells into your pores, clogging them.

How come those "other" cosmetic companies don’t tell you that? They do know, but they would rather spend their money on expensive super models, movie stars and advertising to fool you into believing that this is what you need to use. We would rather spend our money on research and development to bring you products that actually help you and do what they say they are going to do.

Hair Care

Just so that you know the truth behind shampoo, soap, or anything that lathers, we know for years the industry has been telling us that LATHER is a good thing. They make us believe that the more it lathers the better it cleans. NOT TRUE!! The industry uses "Foaming agents" to make the products lather, and most of these chemicals have absolutely NO effect on how well the product actually cleans. The only reason that the industry keeps this "Story of Lather" going is because they can't now say that they have been misleading you all these years with the "Lather Story".

Shampoo, or any cleaner, will "lather" better on the second wash because the "dirt and oils" are encapsulated by the surfactants in the product. That former process makes them ineffective in producing lather because they are already "busy" encapsulating the dirt and oil. In more cases than not, the surfactants are "busy" with the waxes, silicones and build up left by the conditioners and styling agents you used after you washed your hair the day before.

When you wash your hair, what you should concentrate on getting clean is your scalp. Wash with the purpose of cleaning your scalp. The left over "lather" is, or should, be enough to clean your actual hair.